Modern Node.js: Built-in Features That Replace npm Packages

If you learned Node.js a few years ago, you probably install packages for things the runtime now does itself. Here's a tour of built-ins in current LTS versions.

fetch, WebSocket and Web APIs

const res = await fetch('https://api.github.com/repos/nodejs/node');
const repo = await res.json();

const ac = AbortSignal.timeout(5000); // cancel slow requests
await fetch(url, { signal: ac });

fetch, Response, FormData, structuredClone, crypto.randomUUID() and a global WebSocket client are all built in.

Watch mode instead of nodemon

node --watch src/server.js

.env files instead of dotenv

node --env-file=.env src/server.js

A test runner instead of Jest/Mocha

import { test } from 'node:test';
import assert from 'node:assert/strict';

test('adds numbers', () => {
  assert.equal(1 + 1, 2);
});

node --test

Run TypeScript directly

Recent versions strip TypeScript types, so node app.ts works for code that uses only erasable syntax (no enums). Type-check separately with tsc --noEmit.

More worth knowing

• node:sqlite - an embedded SQLite database module (still marked experimental).
• require() of ES modules - CommonJS code can load synchronous ESM packages.
• --permission - restrict file system, child process and worker access for a script.
• util.parseArgs - command-line argument parsing for small CLIs.
• util.styleText - coloured terminal output without chalk.

Run an Active LTS version in production and check the release notes when you upgrade; many "experimental" features become stable within a year.